Although the Des Moines Marathon recognized my mad skillz by assigning me the bib number 1337 (“leet”), I’m by no means an elite runner. So it goes without saying that although a train may have interfered with the leaders as they approached the end of the race, by the time I reached the tracks it was long gone. Fortunately, USA Today paints a picture of the drama that played out:
Nothing, not even a train, could stop Kenyan Simon Sawe from winning the Des Moines Marathon for the second time.
Sawe was leading countryman David Tuwei by 10 seconds when, after a left turn onto the final stretch on Southwest Fourth, he stared right at a train passing on the road.
“Nobody is prepared for that scenario,” said Sawe, the inaugural champion in 2002. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a long train.”
Tuwei caught the 40-year-old Sawe and the two waited … and waited … and waited for the train to pass. Third-place Geoffrey Birgen had nearly caught the two leaders when the train finally crossed the street about 40 to 50 seconds later.
Onondaga distance runner Thomas Longboat
While it’s certainly unusual, this sort of interruption is not unprecedented. In 1907 no less a race than the Boston Marathon had the same thing happen. In this instance, however, the train didn’t hold up the leaders: according to the Boston Globe, around a dozen had crossed tracks in Framingham when the gates came down and a freight train passed by, holding the rest of the pack up for nearly a minute. Running legend Thomas Longboat went on to win the race, though Robert J. Fowler (you know, of the Cambridgeport gym association) complained that he “coulda been a contender” were it not for the train.
Longboat’s finish in 2:24:24 set a new a course record, although at the time the course was (purposely) only 24.5 miles.